Hi! Thanks for reading the blog, as always! Today’s post is about one of the best new shows I’ve seen in a long time, Yuri on Ice!

The Yamamoto and Kubo team have come up with a serious winner here. It’s one of the most talked-about shows I’ve ever come across, both on critics’ pages and on tumblr where people like me go to talk about what we’re watching.

If you haven’t seen it (and I can’t imagine how anyone could have avoided it completely–it’s that popular) it’s the story of a Japanese figure skater named Yuri Katsuki. When the show starts, you’re watching Yuri lose massively at a big tournament. He goes home to basically reset his life and rethink what he’s going to try to do with it. He goes back to college, gets out of shape, and mostly leaves skating behind. He still likes, it though, and you see him still having regrets about that big loss.

One night, when he’s skating alone in the park, he starts to imitate a routine that his favorite skater is famous for. That skater ends up seeing a video that’s posted by some local kids who are watching, and he gets in touch to try and train Yuri for one big, final season. It’s kind of a classic sports trope, but it feels really fresh in anime because, let’s face it, not many anime nerds actually watch a lot of sports movies.

I don’t want to give anything away as far as the plot, but don’t worry–it’s so much more than just watching people skate around for hours. With that said, though, the skating sequences are absolutely amazing. I guess the animators spent a lot of time watching real skaters, and worked the actual moves into the show. You can definitely tell. It’s also a twist on classic sports stories, because Yuri isn’t any kind of prodigy. All he has is effort and dreams, where the older coach is insanely talented but past his prime. There’s also a relationship that unfolds between Yuri and Victor (the older skater who coaches him), that’s definitely ambiguous and tricky, which is so much more interesting to watch than traditional romantic narratives.

The animation is fantastic, which is definitely a big selling point for me. Even when a lot of anime studios are cheapening and going for tacky CGI work, Yuri On Ice looks absolutely stunning, especially in the skating sequences. It has some real drawing marks showing in nearly every seen, so it also has a bit of a human element of imperfection that I really like.

It also has a really good balance between the skating and the emotional arc, which I’m sure was hard to master: I definitely know that the few sports movies I’ve seen in my life didn’t get that right, which makes them even harder to get through. Neither the skating nor the emotional plot feel like a gratuitous add-on, which is definitely an achievement.

Finally, one of the biggest reasons I applaud the creators is the fact that the show deals with mental health and LGBT issues really honestly, which is definitely new territory for anime. Anime is generally a bit patriarchal and super masculine (and totally homophobic), so this is a really nice change of pace that I hope will open the door for a lot of different narratives to be told in this style that we haven’t seen before. This is a great FAQ article about the show if you’re interested:http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/21/13987438/yuri-on-ice-sports-anime-explainer-guide-faq-tumblrIt’s all online for free, so check it out!

Hey guys, today I want to talk about some interesting anime news that’s come into my feed in the past few days. No personal stuff in this post, but if you want updates in my life, check out my post where I talk about adopting a new cat and vacuum into my apartment!

Ok, so anime news:

First up, we have the news that Netflix is going to be massively continuing to expand its own content productions and getting into anime for the first time!

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been really impressed with Netflix’s output. Whether it’s the Marco Polo series’ or the revamped episodes of The Killing, or especially Stranger Things, they have fantastic production value and they seem to be doing really well at getting big talent to work on their projects. I’ve especially enjoyed this first series of A Series of Unfortunate Events which is one of my all-time favorite series of books. I absolutely love Daniel Handler as an author, and I’m so glad they decided to have him write the screenplay. It’s a lot more cohesive than the original movie, which was overall pretty good, but definitely a mess. Anyway it’s fantastic–check it out, if you haven’t already.

So, the news that Netflix is going to start putting that production value and quality control into anime is super cool. They’ve hired a director of anime content for the first time, which can only mean one thing: lots of new, well-made anime episodes! So far, they’ve only put out two smaller projects in anime style, Little Witch Academia and Seven Deadly Sins. This will be the first big anime series they make. They’d be the first American streaming company to commission its own anime, because all the other ones just license shows from Japan to rebroadcast here. Word has it that they’re planning to ditch revamps for the anime division, and make an all new adaptation of a manga series we’ve never seen onscreen. How exciting! I for one can’t wait.

The second piece of news that’s more of a trend than an announcement is that some anime news networks (especially Inverse) have been talking about how President Trump could even have an impact on anime. He’s been promising to cut back on aid to Japan, especially for military things, which would definitely hurt the Japanese economy. According to economists, since anime is considered a luxury or unnecessary pleasure item, people spend less money on it during harder economic times. So, each time Japan has had a recession, you can actually see a really noticeable dip in the amount of anime produced and the budgets of each show.

More than the cuts in aid, President Trump has also talked a lot about imposing trade taxes and things like that on Japanese companies like Toyota which import to the US (even though Toyota actually makes most of its American cars here, he doesn’t feel the need to do research). That would also hurt the economy, which in turn would hurt anime.

Well, Mr. Trump, you can take away our international standing and our national sense of dignity, but anime is just one step too far. Fingers crossed that this won’t actually come true, but it’s definitely interesting to think about how much these things are tied together. I definitely recommend checking out that original Inverse article if you’re interested in reading more.

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